Impacting Journey

In my dining room hangs a framed quote. Normally, I don’t like art like this as it’s not really art at all. Then again, I’m not a very artsy person in general so maybe my “non-art” fits me just right. Back on subject, the canvas says in big bold blue letters “JOURNEY” and below it “The bend in the road is not the end of the road, unless you refuse to take the turn.” No one has ever asked me about the sign and I’ve never volunteered the story. Most just see it as pretty self-explanatory and don’t think there’s any significance to it other than an appreciation for inspiring sentences by anonymous people.

My journey has covered a lot of ground in my 26 (almost 27) years. Next month will be the 9 year anniversary of a really difficult time in my life. The tragic state I was in was admittedly self-induced by a lot of poor decision making on my part. It’s the same old story… “I was a good kid, from a good Christian family that got mixed in with the wrong crowd… blah… blah… blah.” What should’ve been one of the best years of my life was actually one of the lowest times I’ve ever experienced. While most of the rest of my graduating class was preparing for college I was living it up in a fine establishment called Bent Creek (my NC fan club will recognize this). Bent Creek is part of the national forest in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. My friends and I “lived” there for nearly a year… most of which I don’t remember due to high amounts of LSD and THC pumping through my bloodstream. In a nutshell, we got busted with our friend, Sweet Mary Jane on federal property. It wasn’t much, but to our surprise ANY amount of illegal substance in a national forest is a FELONY. Happy birthday to me. My boyfriend (at the time) took the rap for it and was carted off to big house. A few days later came the news that would bring me to my first major “bend in the road”. I was pregnant.

We’ve already established that I was raised in the Southern Baptist church. If you’ve ever known a Southern Baptist during an election year you know that our moral sun rises and sets around the abolishment of abortion… among other valid but pointless arguments. Therefore, abortion was the sin I couldn’t commit. Drug abuse, lying, stealing… I was ok with at the time, but when that little blue world-altering line appeared I knew that I had created a life and therefore I would not let myself end it.

My parents had at some point read some book called “Tough Love” (or something like that) and had basically closed the door to me. They told me not to call, come to visit, or try to contact them in any way until I was ready to get help. When I was finally ready, I picked up the phone to make that call and they were waiting on the other end of the line. Less than four weeks later I was on my way to Mercy Ministries in Nashville. Mercy is a free of charge home for girls dealing with everything from pregnancy (me), drug addiction (me), eating disorders (yep, me again) and anything else damaging that you can imagine. It’s a Christ based treatment program that I liked to refer to as “The God Bubble”. They take girls out of the world, but them in a Jesus-cocoon and nurse them back to health.

I was there out of obligation to this unborn child I was carrying and that was it. You can imagine what the next “bend in the road” felt like when I miscarried my only reason for saving myself. It was insane to me how losing a child that I didn’t even want could be so devastating. As I lay in the hospital I knew that my time in Nashville had come to an end and it was time to go home and finish destroying myself. My parents cried when I told them I wanted to leave because they knew that certain death awaited me. Now, I’m not sure what happened to me while I was under anesthesia that day in the operating room…. I like to believe that it was angels or whispers from God while I slept, but when I woke up I had a newfound hope that life was going to go on. Seven months later, I graduated from Mercy.

What does this story have to do with my dining room “non-art”? I named that baby Journey in the days before he/she died and I found the framed quote shortly after giving birth to my daughter almost five years ago.

Lately, my days seem to be laced with bend after bend after bend. But every morning I am reminded that “The bend in the road is not the end of the road, unless you refuse to take the turn.”
Mercy Ministries is celebrating 25 years of changing lives this year. For more information visit www.mercyministries.com

A friend of mine recently asked me, “Why do I keep feeling this way???” The question was asked out of a moment of loneliness and depression which I understand all too well. Most would think that at this critical moment of my life I should be asking the same question. My response to my friend was short and maybe a little bit calloused, but I believe it was truth.

“You keep feeling this way because you’re letting yourself feel this way. Do something to distract yourself. Go out, read a book, journal,” was my sharp tongued response.

If you don’t know me very well, let me give you a piece of my personality in a short description from my closest friends. My girlfriends and I decided a while back that we would give each other “friend job descriptions”. It was the general consensus among the group that I would not be the friend that you would go to when seeking sympathy, someone to wallow in misery with, or someone to rock with you in the corner singing “it’s gonna be alright, it’s gonna be OK”. I’m the friend that you come to when you’ve hit rock bottom and need a good swift kick in the you-know-what to get out of the wallow pit and move on. Now, that’s not to say that I don’t love you, that I’m unsympathetic, and as calloused as it all sounds. I’m just a “fixer” by nature and if something’s broken I don’t want to talk about the brokenness or how badly the brokenness sucks, I want to make it unbroken – or buy you something new and shiny to make you not care that the broken thing is broken beyond repair.

Life’s really going to suck sometimes. If you haven’t realized this by now, we need to have a chat so I can figure out what it is that you are smoking and get some of it. But when you’re in the pit of despair (insert The Princess Bride voice of the Albino here) remember that you and God above are your only ticket out of that pit.

The letter to the Colossians says to “Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth”. The letter to the Philippians goes on to tell us “Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy–meditate on these things…. Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content: I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

Granted, these passages of scripture I’m sure could be exegeted out to mean something entirely different than the point I’m trying to make here. (I’m sorry to my Veritas scholar friend, as I am sure the word “exegeted” doesn’t actually exist.) Anyhow, I think that these truths were recorded to remind us that God has given us all the tools that we need to be in control of our emotions, our bodies and our minds.

Sometimes we need a little push in the right direction. I’m all in favor of “happy pills” (see previous blog), counselors, friends, psychotherapists, and obviously blogging out all your feelings to the cyber-world. But when it comes down to it at the end of the day… you and only you are responsible for how life has effected your day.

It is now time for my happy pill and a hot bubble bath. Goodnight friends!